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Day 34

2/22/2017

Deportation Dreams

Feb. 22, 2017

IT'S BEEN A DAY since Trump's people announced the latest plans to deport immigrants living in the United States illegally. Some experts say the new policies mean that, potentially, most of the 11 million people could be subject to the crackdown. How many actually will be kicked out isn't clear. But it could be millions.

   Why would a dog like me care?

   That’s what Cat wanted to know.

“First of all,” he yowled – I’m not exaggerating about that yowl, a horrible sound Cat makes when he’s hungry, feeling his age or doesn’t like what Our Humans are watching on TV.

   “First of all, you are a legal dog, just like I’m a legal cat," Cat said. "What’s more, we’re extra safe because Our Humans were, in the immortal words of The Boss, Born in the USA,” Cat continued, singing the last part. "We're family."

   “How can I be sure?” I said.

  “Well, you have your annual dog license from the city of Newport, R.I. You are up-to-date on your rabies shots. The proof is right there on your collar, those two ‘tags’ that go clink-clink-clang – boy, do I hate that sound – wherever you go.”

I thought to myself that Cat doesn’t wear a collar. What if the immigration police, or more likely, their drones, swoop alongside our house, peering into the window of our guestroom, where Cat sacks out most days?

Which actually wouldn’t be the worst thing, since Cat sometimes scares the bejezus out of me with his attacks from ambush, his hissing and his unnatural interest in my dog food bowl. Maybe I should rat him out to ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which could take him to HQ for a a couple of hours, until they brought him back, having verified his records.

“I do have papers, showing that I was adopted legally.” Cat snarled. How come Cat knows what I’m thinking without me saying anything? Cats are extremely creepy.

PAPERS? I told Cat that the only papers I have are from a vet, who examined me after I was found wandering around Missouri when I was only six-months old and then somehow ended up in Rhode Island.

The vet’s report said I was full of lice and needed some dental work, noting for the record that I was a “sweet dog,” which was the first time – but hardly the last – that those words would be used to describe me.

“And your point is?” Cat said.

“They’re only vet records," I said. "They don’t say for sure that I was born in Missouri, just that I was found there. For all I know, I could have been born in Cuba or Panama or Labrador – that’s in Canada – since I’m part Labrador Retriever."

SUDDENLY speaking in a normal voice, Cat said it’s the same with him, except his medical records are from Massachusetts, and they don’t say where he was born, or even when. No proof of birthplace.

Great. I’m partners with an undocumented cat. And my own records are not exactly, to put it in legal-speak, probative.

Neither of us said anything. It had been dark for hours and getting to be bedtime. I’m no clairvoyant like Cat, but we were both thinking the same thing.

What would it be like to hauled away by the immigration troops – Trump wants to hire 10,000 new ones – who any minute in the middle of the night burst into what used to be our home?

   They toss us into the back of some car or van and drive off to who knows where. Our Humans stand on the front porch, watching helplessly as the Federales’ taillights disappear into the February darkness.

“Sleep tight, Cat,” I said.

“You too, Phoebe.”

Day 28

2/16/2017

To Sleep, Perchance to Dream. Not in the Time of Trump

Feb 16, 2017

A FRIEND of ours – at least mine; I’m not sure about Cat, who sleeps so much that I wonder when he gets a chance to make friends – remarked the other day about the problem of “waking up.”

“When I wake up, the first thing I think about is: What has Trump done while I was asleep?”

My worry is that our friend also may have trouble falling asleep for the same reason. I didn’t ask. Which happens a lot when you’re a dog: you don’t think of the right questions when you have the chance.

Our friend went on to say that Trump is unlike any president in my lifetime.

It should be noted here that humans get to live a really long time, so this guy probably has gone through a goodly number of presidents, You remember the old Rule of Dewclaw – multiply a dog’s years by seven to get the equivalent in human years; or divide a human’s age by seven to get the estimate in dog years –although, either way, it's an exercise that seems to me a waste of time.

Our friend also said: When was it that you had to think about a president every day?

It’s a good point. There are a lot of things you should think about every day. Food, of course. Smelling other dogs' behinds. Food. Hoping to find something dead and decaying in a pile of leafs and then rolling in it. And, of course, food.

How often should somebody think about a President? Once a week? Three times a month? Every four years? It could be a promising subject for a PhD dissertation.

AS I WAS SAYING to Cat, there’s a lot to keep track of these day. Just this week, our fellow Rhode Islander, Mike Flynn, got the heave-ho as national security adviser:  Hello, God, It’s me, Phoebe. Are you listening? Please don’t let General Flynn come back home to Middletown, which is only one town away from us. God?

   Trump and Bibi Netanyahu decided to heck with it; one state; two states; either way. Trump said that his Administration is running like a finely tuned machine.

   The guy nominated for labor secretary took a hike; Trump nominated a new guy; berated the press; belittled the intelligence services. (You'd think by now Trump would have figured out that you don't want to get on the official Spooks’ Bad-presidents' List). Berated the media. And late this afternoon, he told his one-thousand-and-forty-fifth lie.

Cat, who is nothing if not a Trump apologist, noted admiringly that Trump seems to have a lot of stamina, because, speaking for himself, Cat'd be completely worn out if he did half of the things the president does, not including the wee-crazy-hours tweeting.

While I agree with Cat’s observation, I don’t think Cat is who you’d want on the witness stand to make that point. Cat gets exhausted just walking upstairs. Or downstairs.

ALREADY, THERE'S been a lot written about Trump Overload.

The mental health community reports an uptick in stress, with a lot of therapy sessions given up to discussions of Trump Stress, with the shrinks themselves taking up half the 50 minutes to say how stressed they are.

Advice from some psychiatrists is for patients to shrink their intake of Trump news. I even read that one explained that there’s little to be gained in finding out about Trump’s latest outrage at 11 p.m., as opposed to sensibly waiting until 4:13 the next morning, when they would normally wake up screaming about having to go through it all over again today.

This sounds right in theory. But not practical.

What if all the people -- the lawyers, the advocates, the relatives and the friends -- who raced to the airports when Trump announced his immigrant ban, had followed that wait-until-morning advice? Think of all the refugees who would have been detained, deported to the countries that want to kill them or otherwise "inconvenienced."

In the Time of Trump, sleep may be necessary medically; but it’s not without its real-world health risks.

Maybe we'll have to start taking turns staying awake while others sleep, like they do in World War II movies: I’ll take the first shift, Private, while you get some shuteye. Roger that, Sarge.

Except that I’m not sure I can trust PFC Cat to make it through his whole shift.

He’s the kind of cat who can fall asleep even if someone drops a nuclear bomb right on top of him.

Which is something that’s not as far-fetched as it would have seemed just four weeks ago.

Day 24

2/12/2017

'Now Is the Winter
of Our Discontent'
Trump at Three Weeks & Counting

Feb. 12, 2017

OKAY, I GET IT. Nobody likes to listen to me or anyone else whining about the weather, especially if you live where the conditions being complained about aren’t relevant.

And to be sure, here in New England, winter comes with the territory, so be quiet.

True, the February skies are sunless. The trees, deprived of their leaves, are Halloween caricatures, bony limbs clawing at brooding skies. The colors are all wrong: blacks, browns and grays. Even the snow doesn’t stay white; absorbing the air’s soot and (I’m ashamed to say) yellow marks of passing dogs.

But this is not what has made this winter one of discontent. It’s Trump.

I don’t mean to go all Shakespeare on you. I’m only a dog, not an English major. And before I wrote this, I had to look up the cliche quotation about winter, and sure enough, if you’re going to refer to this opening line from Richard III, Act 1, Scene 1, you need to add a second line, which is about summer:

Now is the winter of our discontent
Made summer by this sun of York…

Leaving off that second line could be misleading and prompt a late-night insult from the Tweeter-In-Chief:

Fake literature: Liberal blogger-mutt misquoted The Bard to make Trump presidency seem like winter, when Billy S really is saying: It’s SUMMER IN AMERICA. Sad!

But as we shall see later, this famous soliloquy, which Trump, with his shriveled attention span, wouldn’t bother to read to the end, is chillingly appropriate. Shakespeare has a nose for tyrants and villains, ancient and modern..

Where was I?

BARELY THREE WEEKS IN, and Trump already has plunged America into a endless season of shadow and shade. The sun itself has fled, if not from the sky, from our psyches, transforming a joyful, vital and optimistic democracy into a dungeon of depression, division, suspicion and strife.

And really, he’s accomplished this even before the awful things he promised as a candidate have yet to be rolled out. Other than his immigration crackdown – the botched keep-‘em-out executive order and the roundups of “illegals” that began at the end of last week – the full nightmare of Donald Trump hasn’t happened.

Obamacare remains in place today, so thousands aren’t dying - yet. Medicaid and Medicare haven’t been block-granted (i.e. starved of funds); tax “reform” has not yet shifted dollars from the poor and middle class to the rich; schools are still public; civil rights are enforced law; feeble, but real environmental protections are the rule; and law-and-order thuggery is still incubating in the cruel hatcheries of The Donald’s and The Jeff’s imaginations.

BUT ALREADY, Trump has done a number on our collective spirit, wrapping an entire country, and much of the world, in a cloak of twilight and torment.

So many lies. About crowds, crime rates, terrorism, the media, judges and his predecessor, the Sun King. There is never an instance, never a Tweet, never a speech, never a comment that doesn’t contain a fib, an exaggeration or a twisted fact, along with repeated insults, tantrums and put-downs. Even what purports to be the positive agenda of his presidency comes off as bullying and threatening.

Much about Trump remains hidden: his tax returns; the reason he’s so attracted to Putin; his refusal to separate himself and the country from his private businesses; and whether Bannon is the president-in-fact.

But more astonishing, to me, is how much of Trump is in plain view. What you see, what you hear, is what we get. Trump the president is just as awful as Trump the candidate promised.

SO, WHERE DOES that leave me, a simple, sweet mixed-breed dog, offering my services, humbly, to a bewildered nation?

When I first started this blog, I thought that my central contribution would be as a dog, who could offer my extraordinary canine senses – an astonishing power of smell, sharp hearing and quick eye for sudden, distant movements – to scout what Trump was up to.

But you don’t need an extra power of smell or a poet’s sensitiviity to follow Trump’s Trail. It’s in plain sight every day, seven days a week.

To illustrate this point, I went hunting on the Web for a picture showing a scowling, glowering Trump. I found it easily on the White House site. I expected to find a phony, Photoshopped picture of a pretend president pleasant and smiling. Instead, I found this picture that shows the actual, menacing one.

Amazing, huh? It's on the official White House picture.

WRAPPING things up, let's resume our “winter of our discontent” theme, and that passage from Richard III.

   Yes, the speaker starts off talking about how conditions in the kingdom are better than they once were. But quickly, his real intentions are revealed. He hates peace, loves war. He feels an outcast, because he has some physical deformities; and with that chip on his shoulder, he's cooking up some really evil plans. Here are excerpts. You may get a kick about a line about how dogs react to him, which I've underlined:

Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,
Deformed, unfinish'd, sent before my time
Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,
And that so lamely and unfashionable
That dogs bark at me as I halt by them…

…and therefore, since I cannot prove a lover,
To entertain these fair well-spoken days,
I am determined to prove a villain
And hate the idle pleasures of these days.
Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous,
By drunken prophecies, libels and dreams….

Wow. Pretty close, and a real bummer.

   But the point here is not to lose hope.

   I’m an optimist. Really, as a dog, I have no choice. We get fed the same exact bowl of kibble every day; some of us have to share our households with cats; most of us must wear collars, even without having attended divinity school.

Still, as a dog with a long evolutionary history, I believe – and I think my sometimes pal, Cat, will back me up here – I know there are threats, and they are real. We do have to understand them, so that we can survive those who would do us harm.

My role, and yours, is to stay optimistic. Let’s face up to the real dangers, and do something positive every day to ensure a successful outcome.

And remember: let's not be permanently discontented: winter isn't forever.

Day 20

2/8/2017

Unmuzzle Sen. Warren;
Unmuzzle Us All

Feb. 8, 2017

A LOT OF PEOPLE will pass off the muzzling of U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren last night by Republicans as just another instance of gamesmanship in the legislative process.
Not me
And not because, as a dog, I naturally abhor any kind of muzzle.
What happened to Warren was – and is – an outrage.
You don’t silence speech, especially in our most revered forum of free and open debate, the United States Senate.
You don’t use your vote advantage, as did the Republican Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell, to shut down a Democratic opponent.

TRUMPSTER NATION, I’m sure, got a kick out of it. I’m sure Cat would be chiming in if he weren’t in the middle of his morning nap, which is similar to his afternoon nap, except that takes place in the morning.
Cat would tell me that all’s fair in love and war. Just good-natured jostling, leveraging the Senate rulebook to checkmate the endlessly annoying and mouthy Ms. Warren. Had it coming, didn't the Massachusetts Chatterbox. Stop your whining about being outmaneuvered and be a good sport.
No, Cat, not in the Time of Trump.
Not when we have a president with the temperament of a 2-year-old, the heart of a bully and the soul of a banana republic tyrant, enabled by a Republican Party with the spine of chocolate éclair. You don’t mess with free speech, the right of elected Senators to speak on behalf of their voters, the obligation of the legislative branch to serve as a watchdog on the executive. Yes, people, a WATCHDOG.

HERE'S what happened:
Warren, the Massachusetts Democrat, was holding forth on her opposition to Trump’s nomination of fellow Senator Jeff Sessions to be the administration’s attorney general.
She was reading from statements of two dead people, the widow of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, decades earlier when Sessions was denied a federal judgeship.
The Republicans dusted off an obscure rule that originated from a 1902 fistfight between Senators, meant to promote decorum, by forbidding a Senator from making “unworthy” about another Senator.
In this case, the unworthy words from Ted Kennedy’s grave were to the effect that Sessions, then a U.S. attorney, was a “disgrace to the Justice Department” and shouldn’t become a federal judge.
You’d think even a lazy cat would lose sleep over this one, it’s so bizarre and convoluted.
First of all, free speech is the prime reason we have a great country. Secondly, the debate was about whether the Senate should confirm a presidential appointee. The appointee happened to be a Senator. McConnell didn’t like the drift of the opposing arguments. He invoked the rule. Crazy as the interpretation of the rule was, he had the votes and Warren’s fellow Democrats didn’t. Meaning Warren couldn’t talk about the Sessions’ nomination any more.
I hate to use this phrase, but, McConnell treated Warren like a dog.
“Elizabeth, shut up!”
“Elizabeth, Sit.”
“Elizabeth, Stay.”

I SAY THIS to Cat and all other Trumpites: Beware when the majority silences the minority. Sooner or later, that sort of thing comes back to bite you.
And bite us all.
I’ll tell Cat, when he wakes up, what I’d say to the Triumphant Trumpites, the Losing Democrats and everyone in between:
Bark. Meow. Shout. Tweet. Write. Call.
Unmuzzle Sister Elizabeth.
Unmuzzle us all.

Day 18

2/6/2017

A Proposal:
Extreme Vetting - for Cats

Feb. 6, 2017

“Hey, so-called cat. I want to talk to you,” I called out to Cat.

“You talkin’ to ME?” Cat growled from the upstairs guest room, where he was curled up in a pool of sunlight that splashed across the bed.

“I am talking to you,” I said.

“Well, don’t,” he said. “I’m busy. Go do something useful, like bark at the pleasant lady who delivers the mail, or at that old guy who shuffles along the sidewalk in front of the house with a walker, or whatever it is that brave and bold dogs do.”

“And where do you get off calling me a ‘so-called cat?’ “ Cat said.

Sometimes it’s so easy to get Cat to take the bait.

“I wanted to see whether it bothered you to be called a ‘so-called cat,’ just like President Trump called the federal judge, who temporarily halted his immigration ban, a ‘so-called judge,’" I said.

Cat’s tail was twitching, thumping on the cover of the bed, a dangerous sign, meaning that he could be getting ready to whatever it is that cats do – swat one of my soft, velvety ears? Thump. Thump. Trump. Trump. TRUMP!

The immigration order was really getting on my nerves, the more I heard about it on NPR. It just didn't seem very American. I wondered whether Cat was feeling any regrets about the election, since I suspected that he was pretty taken with Trump during the campaign. Did it bother Cat that thousands of people’s lives were turned upside down? And what the next step might be? And the step after that? Until America turned into an entirely different kind of country.

BUT EXTREME VETTING? Trump said he needed to stop immigration for just a little while, so that he could develop an extreme vetting program.

   He said it would help "keep America safe," and I guess, just like you, it's hard for me to argue that's not a good thing.

But in my case, I didn't really know what extreme vetting might be, exactly. After all, I'm just a dog. It's all I can do to deal with Cat, who is a friend and sometimes not.

SPEAKING OF CAT, I should mention that the cover of the guest bed gets disgustingly filthy whenever Cat lies on it, and then the Nice One has to wash it, although she never seems to complain, which I guess can be explained by the fact that she is the Nice One.

Cats have a reputation for being “very clean,” which is something I absolutely have never understood. Number One – Cats are, in fact, filthy, loathsome creatures, who like to scare sweet. gentle dogs like me. And Number Two – While they are perpetually licking themselves, cats actually are swallowing tons and tons of cat fur, which they then will throw up at inconvenient times and places in the form of hairballs.

This is in contrast to dogs, who are unfairly criticized by dog haters. Have you noticed that since the election, there seems to have been an increase in disparaging things being said about dogs, comments like: “Who would want something in your house that sheds all over the place?”

Of course, dogs shed. Even I shed. Number One – Shedding is a very normal and wonderful part of dogs’ lives and the lives of those who love them. And Number Two - the fur that I shed from my nearly pure white coat, which is one of my most admired characteristics that constantly draws compliments when I go for walks with the Grouchy One - that fur is very easy to clean up; it comes right off most carpets with a few effortless strokes of the vacuum cleaner. Unlike disgusting cat hair.

I WONDERED if President Trump might want to do something about cats. Had he considered a temporary ban on all intrastate and interstate travel by cats, in order to develop a system of extreme vetting for cats, which also might help keep America - if not safer, at least cleaner?

As I mentioned, I wasn't sure what extreme vetting of cats would entail. But I knew about regular vetting.

   That's when Our Humans take me and Cat to see the vet, who tries to keep us healthy. The vet sticks things into us and cuts our nails and feels our stomachs, takes our temperatures, and looks into our ears (yuk), and stuffs pills down our gullets.

   So. I assumed extreme vetting would just be more of that sort of thing, but with a bigger bill (if that’s possible). And what's to object about that?

“WHY DID you call me a ‘so-called cat?” Cat said, breaking my train of thought.

“I told you,” I said. “I wanted to know how you would feel if the president called you a ‘so-called cat.’ “

“Well, he wouldn’t, would he?” Cat said. “First of all, I am a cat, not sort-of-a-cat. And what’s more, I’m a cat named ‘Cat,’ so even if I weren’t a cat, I would still be a ‘Cat.’ What do you think of that, Ms. Sheds-Like-Crazy?”

Then a chilling thought: if Trump issued an executive order banning travel by cats, Cat wouldn't be allowed to leave our house, like in my favorite daydream, where he runs away. Then, I'd be stuck with Cat, a cat with a low opinion of dogs. He would be here “temporarily,” which in Trumpspeak, meant forever.

Perhaps, I thought, that wouldn’t be such a bad outcome. I guess that I’d miss Cat if he ever did leave. (Please don't let him know that I said that).

You wonder if Trump has thought about all of this as he develops his immigration and other programs: How you can do one thing, and that leads to something you didn't expect, and pretty soon, it's a great big mess.

I’m sure he has considered this. After all, he’s the president. How could he not?

Day 13

2/1/2017

0 Comments

In Trump's America:
No More Snow Days

Feb.1, 2017
“Snow Day. It’s a Snow Day!” I called out to Cat.
Cat had been pestering me about why I’d let the Trump blog go for several days without a posting.
“What’s a Snow Day?” Cat said.
“It’s a sacred New England tradition,” I explained. “When a big snow storm comes up, you don’t go to work, go to school or anything else. It’s a surprise day off! It’s mandatory.”
Cat looked at me with one of those scowls that have a creepy resemblance to that glowering pouty-face you see in photos of President Trump.
“Technically, every day is a day off for you and me,” he said. “Neither of us have jobs, or goes to school.”
Cat isn’t what you would describe as one of the sharper knives in the drawer; but, on the other hand, it’s pretty hard to pull a fast one on him. So I tried a different approach.
“When it snows, it’s important to go right to a park, or at least to the backyard, as fast as possible, while the snow is fresh, so you can roll around, bury your face in a snow drift or lie on your back and make snow angels.”
“This is why God made dogs?” Cat said, with one of those looks that signaled that he might make a full frontal rush at me, rather than, just attack from ambush as he usually does.

INSTEAD, he climbed up a couple of steps on the front hall stairs, turned around, and began what I swear was a kind of sermon, as I sat on the floor in horror, like one of those country-song sinners, who had strayed on Saturday night and now, on Sunday morning, was trapped in the front pew.
“You promised that you were going to keep track of ALL of the terrible and scary

things Trump is doing, and write about them,” Cat intoned.
“Instead, you’re out in some park, making snow angels. Which is what they mean when they say you're just "'dogging it.'"
“Big things, Phoebe," he continued from his stairway pulpit, "are happening.”
“The immigrant ban, for one. Men, women and children stranded at airports. People scared, uncertain, in fear of their lives. The president and his “men” saying it’s no big deal (even though it’s something they just had to spring without any warning, debate or plan). Just 109 folks ‘inconvenienced.’ Actually, the number is 90,000 - that’s how many have visas to go back and forth to the seven 'mostly Muslim' countries."
Which isn’t even the real point. The real point is the terrible things that humans do to each always start small ....”

I WAS REALLY floored, there on the hall floor. Cat was sounding like some kind of hysterical Hillary evangelist. And this was a guy I could have sworn was behind the failed Felines for Trump movement in Newport, which had been doomed by the age-old conundrum of “trying to herd cats.”
“Hold off, Preacher Man,” I pleaded. “I went to the Ladies’ March at the State House. I watched – and commented on – the dreadful Inaugural Speech. What do you expect from me? I’m just one dog, for Heaven’s sake.”
Cat stared down from his perch, lightening flashing from his eyes.
“This isn’t a hobby that you do when it’s convenient or when you feel like it,” Cat said. “You don’t get time off. You can’t go back to your old comfortable life. That ended on Nov. 8, 2016.”
“Think of it as the day that democracy was diagnosed with a terrible and possibly fatal disease,” Cat said.
“It means that everyone who loves democracy now has to help save it.”
“Stay up late. Get up early. Do whatever the doctor orders, if you can find one that has the slightest idea of what to do.”
“Weekends, my friend. Lunchtime. Prime time. Snow days. Nothing is the same anymore. This is the meaning of bad news. And understand this: No matter what we do, it may not work. But we have to try.”
I wondered whether Cat was going to actually burst into tears, then remembered the comforting words of that old gospel song: “Real cats don’t cry.”
“Where’re you going?” Cat demanded, as I started to walk away.
“To the backyard,” I said. “The snow's starting to melt, and I’ve got some more angels to make before it’s too late.”

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A "sweet dog" confronts the catastrophe of the Trump presidency

The Tracker

PHOEBE might have remained a “sweet” and apolitical dog but for the Trump crisis. Now, like millions of Americans, she wrestles daily with the challenge of what to do about it. With no illusions about the impact, she founded and is the principal writer of the Tracking Trump blog.

In Memoriam

CAT, a cat and Libertarian was Phoebe's co-author. He died Nov. 14, 2019. His self-described role was to leaven Phoebe’s naiveté and idealism with “common sense." He is remembered and missed.

Day 34

​Deportation Dreams

﻿Day 28

​To Sleep, Perchance to Dream. Not in the Time of Trump

Day 24

'Now Is the Winterof Our Discontent' Trump at Three Weeks & Counting